Hello Cove Church, Winston here. I’m the worship director and here I am again to talk about the Psalms and my passion for the Psalms. If you've seen my face show up on social media or our blog recently, I’m probably talking about the Psalms. And you might be thinking, “Wow, this guy’s like a broken record, just going around and round and round on the same thing. What is he making a big deal about the Psalms for?” If you're thinking that, that's ok! I’m not surprised because we don’t tend to make a big deal about the Psalms. They’re one of 66 books that we have in the Bible and they're great and they have their own special place. But why make a big deal out of these?
Well, I'll tell you a little bit of my personal story when it comes to the Psalms. About three years ago, my brother sent me a psalter. What is a psalter? It’s the book of Psalms in its own book. You might think, what's the point of that? Don’t you already have one, in your Bible?
I do! Bibles are big, and there's a ton of pages and there are all these notes and everything. They're meant to be laid out on the desk and poured over, whereas a book like this, you just stick it in your back pocket. You can hold it, it’s light. A book like this is meant to be opened like any hymn book and prayed.
And that’s what I've been doing for the last three years. I open this every day and pray through the Psalms. Probably 3-5 every day, I pray. And once I go through all 150, I do it again. Let me tell you, after a while of just going deeper and deeper and deeper into the Psalms, letting them go deeper and deeper and deeper into my heart, I start to think about God in new ways. They've given me a voice to communicate to God that I didn't have before.
As your worship director at the church, this is something that, yes, I’m paid to care about. I’m paid to care about how we pray and how we worship. It's part of my job so that's why I'm thinking about it, but this is also a personal testimony of how the Psalms can be transformative for your worship and your prayer. Because all the songs we sing at church, as special as they are, they are leaves on a great oak tree. And the oak tree, the trunk, that’s the Psalms.
Psalm 98 begins in this way: “Sing to the Lord a new song.” And you might be thinking, “does that mean we’re supposed to be writing new songs? Aren't these just templates for all the new songs we’re going to write?” They can be. As I said, they're part of the trunk. But there’s something special about going back to the trunk, going back to the source. And when we sing any song, whether it's been around 2 years, 1 month, or 2000 years or more, it's a new song every time! Because the Holy Spirit is living and active within you and is living and active within its Holy Word. That's to be a new song on your lips. And so Psalm 98 says, “Sing to the Lord a new song.” It also says this: “Chant unto the Lord with a harp. With a harp and with a voice of a Psalm.”
We may not be strumming harps in church these days, but the psalter still remains. So chant unto the Lord with the voice of a Psalm and let it be your voice. That's my prayer to you. We’ll discover that together and like a broken record, we'll keep coming back to the Psalms and chanting them together.
About the Author
Winston Arblaster
Winston is an Oregonian whose favorite things include the “3 C’s”: coffee, craft beer, and writings of the Church Fathers. As Music Director, the highlight of his week is when he sees others open their hearts to God in worship.
He and his wife, Stephanie, live with their cat, Jerome, and love to travel.
Fun fact: Winston is a dual citizen to the UK and was named after Winston Churchill.
